Missing the Yes: Prodigal Style

[Note: this post picks up on the end of last week's posts about redeeming ambition. -Ed.]

So it was with the sermon and the misty-eyed Sports Illustrated moment in mind that I went last Monday to a day-long spiritual formation retreat put together for IV staff in our region. I tried to hammer out there what exactly it was that I wanted.

I articulated it thusly: I think what I’m ambitious for is to be as near the epicenter of God’s unfurling “yes” to the world in Christ Jesus as I possibly can be in my locales: my neighborhood, my home, and on campus. If the story of the New Testament is the story of God making known to all the world that he is the “YES” God, that all his promises are yes to us in Jesus Christ, then I want to pick up on that story and be a part of it, have some role to play whenever and wherever he would allow me to do so.

And from this place, I began to engage the content of our spiritual retreat day: the story of the Prodigal Son. And what I wanted to see was how it is that both of these sons miss the joy of the Father's yes. And I wanted to ask the Lord to help me be fully aware of how my good desires can go wrong: I know that it does so often for so many people in so many spheres of leadership--from Enron to televangelists.

The first part of our day, we focused on the Prodigal Son himself. How does he miss the Father's heart? How does he miss out on the good Father's yes? It seems to me that the crux of the matter is that he takes the Father's resources and goes and pursues his own appetites.

I'm all too familiar with this temptation! To take the Father's good resources and go and try to do my own thing, to pursue my own appetites, to build my own kingdom. What the good Father instead invites me to do is to take his gifts and offer them back to him: show me how to use these alongside you! Let's go to work together!

This is participating in the Father's yes in his ways, in his timing, with the supreme and ultimate benefit of being in his company. The invitation: to repent of my attempts at building my own kingdom with His resources.

I don't think this is solely a temptation for folks in ministry, although it has particular expressions for those of us who are "religious professionals." But my guess is that many folks, in all kinds of walks of life, struggle with the temptation to take resources that are gifts from God and use them in sorts of wrong ways.